YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Unusually named and recently rocketed to boob tube fame actress America Ferrera plays a metal mouthed gurl dubbed Ugly Betty on T.V., but in real life, the wonderfully voluptuous and much more attractive in person Miss Ferrera is a bonified real estate Bargain Betty. Your Mama heard some time ago that Miss Ferrera and her boy beau had snatched up a new nest in the Hills above Hollywood, but at the time, our research and spider web of contacts came up empty handed.

That is, until two days ago when our aide-de-camp Lucy Spillerguts whispered the address in Your Mama's big ear. So we confirmed with Mirakle Mike, another pal who seems to know more about celebrity real estate than one person should, and we enlisted the assistance of our Fairy Godmother in the Hollywood Hills, and voila! Turns out that Miss Ferrera and her boy beau did indeed purchase house in the hills, a purple hill climber on a wickedly windy road just around the corner from the mildly Mediterranean style house that baby's butt smooth bodied Jessie Metcalfe recently unloaded for $1,495,000.

Property records show Miss Ferrera's new digs measure a modest 3,523 square feet with three bedrooms and a nicely proportional 3.5 bathrooms, including what listing information calls an "elegant powder room." Now children, dinner guest poopers can be clean, they can be spacious, they can be sleek and/or interesting. We'd go so far as to say one could even even be remarkably stylish. However, Your Mama is hard pressed to believe one can be "elegant." A Baccarat chandelier or something minimal from Moooi over the terlitmightklass it up a little, but send it tumbling over the edge of elegance? Uhm, No. Your Mama declares this interior day-core rule #851: Itty bitty and often windowless rooms where guests (hopefully discreetly) do their durtybizness can only fail in their futile attempts to feign elegance.

Anyhoo, listing information for Miss Ferrera's purple palace also reveals the two story house (three if you include the garage level with parking for 2 cars) includes a living/dining room, family room, a large kitchen with breakfast area, a library/study, an office, a media room and a gym. Your Mama is breathless. That is a lot of damn rooms to be fitted into a 3,500 square foot house. We're not sure whether to applaud the architect for his/her crafty space planning ingenuity or to lay him/her over our lap and paddle their bare backside for stuffing a moose into a Mini Cooper.

The house appears to have originally been placed on the market with a $2,199,000 asking price. That number was later ka-rah-tay chopped all the way down to $1,498,000 before Miss Ferrera and her boy beau stepped in and snapped up the mauve mini-manse up for $1,415,000. Clearly Miss Ferrera waited patiently, played her cards correctly and nabbed herself a bit of a bargain...that is if you can call any house that resembles Barney a bargain at $1,415,000. And really children, who could blame her (or anyone else for that matter) for wanting this house a bargain price when you consider there's a fair amount of cosmetic work to be done which will surely keep Miss Ferrera's nice gay decorator hard at work on Miss Ferrera'sUgly Betty dime for quite some time to come?

Looking beyond all the bad choices in furniture–which exited the building with the sellers, of course–and the beige carpeting–which can be quickly and easily changed–Your Mama feels there are still a number of significant issues to be dealt with starting with that disturbing and giant mural of Mt. Fuji or some other Japanese countryside glaring out from the wall behind the fiberglass swimming pool. Jeezis, Mary and Joseph, whose bright idea was that? Unfortunately for Miss Ferrera, the pool will need to be drained in order to get that wacky wall issue worked out. With the high cost of water in Southern California that will be no small or inexpensive feat of decorating derring-do. However, hunnies, it must be done, no matter the cost.

Although we don't like it, the kitchen we can tolerate...it's big and looks like it has a nice view to stare at while scrubbing pots and pans. On the other hand, that cereal bowl for a sink sitting on that slab of speckled granite in the master bathroom is a serious interior design crime that we suggest Miss Ferrera deal with immediately before she feels the need to poke her own eyeballs out with the blunt end of her toothbrush.

Both Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter adore the large terrace with a lovely view over the tree tops. We think this could be an excellent spot to soak up some sun or sit under a large market umbrella reading Brontë novels and catching up on all the gossip glossies. We can appreciate that the previous owners needed something over the round openings in the wall–we have pooches we wouldn't want falling off the terrace, too–but certainly there is a more attractive but equally effective solution than stapling some cheap-ass chicken wire over the holes, right?

Now children, before you go crazy picking apart the island in the kitchen or the strange drapery in the living room, please remember that the day-core you're looking at in the pictures, fortunately, no longer exists in the house. So let's all have a moment of silence in an effort to telepathically command Miss Ferrera and her boy beau to spend a few bucks sprinkling some serious interior day-core fairy dust on the roof, in the corners and behind the refrigerator.

Your Mama would like to offer Miss Ferrera (and her boy beau) many congratulations on buying her first home (we're pretty sure this is her first purchase), and we sincerely hope that once the kinks are worked out, this house will prove to be a happy respite from her busy work life.

25 comments:

Dolly
said...

This certainly seems very cheap considering the amenities. I am not convinced that the poolside Mt. Fuji has to go right away. I think I could live with it for a while at least. What's with the R on the gym wall?

This one was on the market for a while. Or maybe it has been sold multiple times.

The mural is to hide the fact that the pool is butted up against a big retaining wall. I would do something else. Like maybe a rock veneer with small rock planters scattered in it to give the illusion of a Hawaiian mountainside pool. I don't know..something.

Definitely paint the exterior.

We changed the water in our pool this spring and it only cost $80. Wasteful thing to say on Earth Day but you do have to change the water every couple of years because the chemicals used to treat the water will eventually eat the plaster (don't know what it would do to a fiberglass pool).

I'm guessing the screening/chicken wire over the openings is either child or long-bodied bitch protection. If she has neither she could take those off.

Well, a not-great house in a great neighborhood is easier to fix than the reverse. If she has a good eye for design, she can make it a showplace. I'd start with the landscaping and exterior paint and then move indoors.

PCH, Appears to me the power lines are below the window line. It is a steep lot. Gotta have them somewhere since we don't have buried power in most of Los Angeles but that would be better than the houses I've seen in Laurel Canyon where the only view is a huge picture window in the living room with power lines so close they look like you could reach out and touch them.

I was looking at a house near the top of Curson, and I couldn't get over the power lines. I know they have to get the power somehow, but when they're right in front of the view...I'm hoping America's are well below the sight line.

Down here on Balboa Island, which is actually two islands (well, three, but the third hardly counts), the Little Island (over the bridge by the firehouse and the market) got itself organized and buried all the utilities. It's 100 percent better.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the house JM bought is across the street from the houses with the open views, like the one AF bought. If he paid 1.5 second row, and she paid 1.1 on the view side of the street, I'd say she got herself a deal.

I agree the house needs work. The front needs serious landscaping, and the mural, oh my. As they say, the house has a lot of potential. I LOVE the master bedroom.